About 13 percent of children in the United States change schools four or more times before enrolling in high school, and job loss, home foreclosures, and homelessness may be driving up student mobility, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The Dec. 20 report found that 11.5 percent of schools have high rates of mobility, defined as having more than 10 percent of K-8 students leave by the end of the school year. Compared with schools that have less mobility, those schools had higher percentages of students who were low-income, received special education, or were English-language learners.
The report draws on federal data from 1998 to 2007 as well as interviews conducted last spring with educators in three states.
